Detained

Darcy’s head came up, a bewildered expression on her face. She choked out an, “Ay, ay Captain,” and they were the funniest words he’d ever heard. She was flushed a gorgeous pink and completely breathless. She shifted so she could twine her hands around his neck and sit astride his lap.

Too silly but he said it anyway, “Ready to come aboard?”

She lost it altogether, throwing her head back. He had to grab her to stop her toppling off his knees. When she righted herself there were tears in her eyes.

His laughter shut down as flash fast as her mood changed. She was snatching air, only a shuddered breath away from sobbing. “I thought they’d killed you.”

This might kill him, seeing her open and raw like this.

“I was so scared, Will.”

He touched her wet cheek with his thumb and she sighed. He brushed it over her trembling mouth and replaced it with his lips. She couldn’t make a kiss happen, she was crumbling. He rested his forehead on hers and wrapped his arms around her. “I was scared too. I thought I’d never hold you again. Never have the right to.”

Her sobs broke and the sound of them pierced all his wounds. He squeezed her tight to stop himself breaking too. His knee ached, there was hot pain in his arm, his face hurt, his ribs creaked. And then he did break, his own tears falling in her hair and on her neck.

He needed to kiss her, to have all of her with him to feel whole again, to fight off that terror memory of losing her imbedded in his head. This time she could shape her lips to his and her touch on his back, on his chest, on his face, anaesthetised the pain, brought heat, brought healing, brought ardour.

From laughter to tears, from tears to sharp flickers of desire; now they were coming apart in a different way, equally as urgent, felt bone deep, but wilder, without restraint and without fear.

Will carried Darcy to the bedroom. She was weightless, fine, wrapped around him like cling-film. They stripped each other between fevered embraces and sucking kisses. His boots were a struggle, his plaster cast scratched her skin. When they were both naked, she toured his body, scar by scar, old and new, fingers and tongue with tiny grazes of teeth and whispered nonsense. Every touch made him want to beg her to stop, beg her to go on. She moved from his knee to his hip, over his ribs and chest to his collarbone and shoulder. She licked the scar under his chin and brushed her nose against his, fingertips pressing his reformed cheek, and brow.

“Show me you’re alive, Will.”

He was super

human for her, alight for her, craved the vanilla of her skin, the fit of her in his body’s hollows and muscle curls. Joined to her at mouth and centre, he needed nothing else to survive. The answer to anger and sadness were inside her softness, inside the roll of her hips and the dig of her fingers on his back.

She was surgery for his senses, stitching them together with kisses and kitten noises, with undulating rhythms and jarring quakes, sealing them with subtle caresses and tight possessive grips.

This coming apart was blindingly brilliant, coloured by hope and future, dipped in wave after wave of exhausting pleasure.

She slept, sprawled across his chest, and he gazed at her in the long shadows of afternoon light with childlike wonder. In Pudong, she’d been a toy, something to play with before deciding if he wanted her. God, the arrogance of it. And the shock of surprise from the wanting. And how quickly it became something more. He’d figured she was essential before he understood what that meant, and now that he did, he agreed with Jiao.

She could ruin him if he let her. If she hadn’t already.

When Darcy resettled in sleep on the pillow, he got up, dragged his jeans on and padded into the kitchen. He made coffee and took the sat phone outside. He watched the signal meter till he had a green light. He called Pete. He had some explaining to do and one word on the tip of his tongue to do it with.

Pete said, “So Tara,” in a tone that made him grimace.

“What can I say?”

“At least I know why you’re hard to contact. I don’t know why you couldn’t tell me.”

“You’d have come and I needed to do this alone.”

“Where’s Bo?”

“Taking a road trip.”

“I would’ve come. Would that have been so bad?”

He looked down towards the creek, the stand of trees; the view dominant in the tattoo on his back. “My demon, Pete. Not yours.”

“What’s it like?”

“The same. Different. Everything is smaller, and less threatening.”

“And the creek?”